My baby sister, Richelle, left us earlier this week to embark on her World Race journey for 11 months. I shared her mission here, and she officially took off this past Sunday. The week’s leading up to it, anytime we were together I would just start crying uncontrollably. Straight up ugly crying and I couldn’t stop. She’s one of my best friends and she was going to be faraway, it makes me sad because she will be missed, but happy because she’s serving others and following what’s in her heart.

Since she wouldn’t be here for her birthday in October, we threw her a very early surprise birthday party before she left! She came over to my house, not knowing we had something up our sleeve, and she was utterly confused when she came to the backyard and saw the happy birthday sign and everyone joyfully yelling at her. She said, “What?! It’s not my birthday!” We told her we were celebrating it early and she just started laughing.

It was a pretty small party with just our family and some of her close friends and we all spent the evening eating, chatting, and having fun together. We showered her with birthday gifts (things she needed for her upcoming trip) and she kept saying how silly we all were that evening.

Ben and I put together one long table for everyone to sit at, I cut some bougainvillea branches placed them all along the center, and made a “Happy Birthday” sign from card stock and added dowel stems to it. To get them upright, we drilled a hole for each letter stem into a piece of wood, and inserted the dowels. We are going to miss RJ once October 1st comes around, but I’m glad we were able to celebrate her birthday before she left.

Actually, since she won’t be here for Christmas either, we celebrated that early too and we did that at my mom’s house about a month ago. I’m surprised my mom didn’t find time to sneak in an early Thanksgiving dinner in!